Pushing the resolution even higher saw the gap close again and at 5,760 x 1,080 with 4xAA the GTX 680 2GB, while still quicker, saw its advantage over the HD 7970 3GB slip to eight per cent.ĭue to the GTX 680 2GB’s R300 series driver, we were forced (again) to retest cards in Skyrim in order to provide useful results, this time retesting the rest of Nvidia’s line-up with the GeForce 296.10 WHQL driver and the AMD cards on their release drivers. At 2,560 x 1,600 with 4xAA this gap again narrowed, but with a minimum frame rate of 75fps the GTX 680 2GB was still 17 per cent faster than the HD 7970 3GB. Here the GTX 680 2GB posted an incredible minimum frame rate of 113fps at 1,920 x 1,080 with 4xAA, a 25 per cent improvement over the HD 7970 3GB’s result of 90fps. It’s a similar pattern in Dirt 3, where the GPU boosted 1071MHz, occasionally rising to 1,084MHz during less demanding sections of the benchmark. At 2,560 x 1,600 with 4xAA the gap between the GTX 680 2GB and the HD 7970 3GB narrows, with the GTX 680 2GB managing a minimum frame rate of 37fps to the HD 7970 3GB’s 33fps, but this still represents a 12 per cent improvement. In fact, it’s just a few per cent off the performance of the GTX 590 3GB, a card that launched one year ago for almost £600.

This is 23 per cent higher than the HD 7970 3GB’s minimum of 52fps, and an amazing 36 per cent higher than the GTX 580 1.5GB in the same test.

In Battlefield 3 we saw the GPU core frequency boost to 1084Mhz, resulting in a minimum frame rate of 64fps for the GTX 680 2GB at 1,920 x 1,080 with 4xAA. In all our other benchmarks though, it was a very different story, with the GTX 680 2GB imperiously demolishing the oppositions minimum frame rates. However, at 5,760 x 1,080 the GTX 680 2GB atones for its performance at lower resolutions by finally bettering the HD 7970 3GB, albeit by just five per cent with a minimum frame rate of 21fps. At 2,560 x 1,600 with 4xAA the situation gets worse, as the GTX 680 2GB is pipped by AMD’s cheaper alternative, the HD 7950 3GB.

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